Sir Mo Farah eats a lot of pasta. Tonnes of the stuff. But not birthday cake, even though the London 2012 hero turned 40 today.
I’m A Celeb star Mo has ditched any showbiz trappings and is back in full bootcamp mode ahead of the London Marathon on April 23, after being forced to pull out last year with a hip injury.
So every week – even birthday ones – he runs 125 miles through the beautiful Ethiopian mountains, where he’s been training for the last month.
It’s a gruelling existence, but that’s the life of a double-double gold Olympian.
“I feel all right,” he says. “I’m getting there. My hip is taking a while to recover. But I’m back, I’m not in any pain at all.
“Last year, I was training with Bashir Abdi, who finished third in the Marathon; I wasn’t in bad shape. But injuries come as part of what we do.”
It’s something his mum Aisha, who still lives in Somaliland where Mo was born, likes to playfully nag him about.
He laughs: “She asks me, ‘Why you running?’ She doesn’t quite understand it. She’s like, ‘Why are you hurting yourself?’ I say, ‘I do enjoy it, even if it’s painful at times.’ It’s just Mum being Mum.”
The true story of Mo’s close relationship with his mother was only revealed last year in BBC documentary, The Real Mo Farah.
They lost contact for years after she sent Mo to live with relatives in Djibouti to save him from the Somali civil war in which his father was killed in 1987.
Shockingly, and unbeknownst to Aisha, little Mo was trafficked to the UK aged eight or nine on false papers and forced to work as a domestic servant for a family in West London.
His birth name, Hussein Abdi Kahin, was dropped and he was threatened by the traffickers not to tell anyone about his past, if he wanted to ‘keep food in his mouth’.
Mohamed Farah, as he was known from that day on, had to wait until he was nearly 20 to find out his mother was still alive and desperate to find him.
“I’m very close to my mum and always have been since we’ve been in touch again, but she’s just proud of me,” Mo says. “She’s very supportive.”
Despite his achievements, his social standing as a modern-day British superhero, Mo took a very long time to confront his past as a victim of child trafficking.
Mo’s name was one the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, stumbled over when recently challenged about the Illegal Migration Bill, which opposition MPs have warned would deny support to genuine victims of people-trafficking and modern slavery.
Asked whether Mo would have been deported once he’d reached the age of 18 under the proposed legislation, Ms Braverman swerved the question.
Mo says, tactfully: “I’ve been away, I haven’t heard too much about it.
“But all these people are just vulnerable. They don’t choose to be in that situation. It happens to be a tough situation and we have to see that.
“If it wasn’t for my country who supported me, my teacher, I wouldn’t have become the man I have become. That’s what we have to see.”
It was being a loving father that convinced Mo to make the documentary and no longer keep the truth from his four children - Rhianna, 17; 10-year-old twin daughters Aisha and Amani, and his seven-year-old son Hussein, who is named after his young self.
He says: “Seeing my kids and thinking, ‘Oh my god, I was that age…’ I had to be honest with them, because I can’t imagine them going through what I did.
“One of the hardest things was thinking, ‘It’s just me’. But you’re not alone. There are so many people out there in the world who have gone through similar things as I did. Child trafficking is huge. And I was shocked by seeing how high the numbers are.”
Those days spent looking after strangers’ children, who were barely any younger than little Mo himself, have left their mark. “One of the hardest things is you never stop blaming yourself,” he says quietly.
“Even myself, for so many years, you think, ‘Is it my fault? It’s my fault.’ It takes a lot out of you.
“There are so many people in that situation, even as an adult, because you might be vulnerable and someone’s taken advantage of you. No child, no one should ever go through these things. But they do exist. We just have to tackle it, and hopefully support those people.”
It was his PE teacher, Alan Watkinson, who set Mo on the path he’s since raced along.
A teenage Mo confided in him, and Mr Watkinson called social services. Mo was placed with a caring foster family. That moment of trust led to Mo finding his passion for long-distance running, from which still burns today.
“Winning gold in London 2012 was huge, nothing else I do in my career will beat that,” he grins. “Even when I repeated it in Rio it wasn’t the same. That support, the home crowd. That Super Saturday will always stay with us.
“When I look back now, that was a long time ago. That’s when you feel old! But if I were to pick the best moment of my career, that was the year. Me, Jess [Ennis-Hill] and Greg [Rutherford] all winning gold.”
That feted night, Mo was in a dream-like state as he wandered out of the Olympic Stadium clutching his medal.
He says: “I remember going to the [athletes’] village and just having a McDonald’s because everything else was shut! I had a Big Mac meal and a large strawberry milkshake.
“I remember lying in bed and just thinking, ‘Oh my god…’ It was incredible. I probably got a few hours’ sleep, but you don’t really sleep because you’re thinking, ‘Did that really happen?’
Each of Mo’s four Olympic gold medals has one of his children’s names engraved on it, so when they’re old enough... “They can take responsibility for them”, Mo laughs.
His kids don’t treat his achievements quite like his fans, however.
“They just see me as Dad. They repeat things when I say them – ‘Daaad, no, that’s not how you say it’. Or, ‘Did you not know this?’”
His youngest has convinced Arsenal fan Mo to spend what little free time he has gaming. He even took his PlayStation to Ethiopia.
“I play a lot of FIFA,” he admits a little sheepishly. “I’ve been playing with the SoccerAid team. Everyone’s on there: Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Beckham, all the legends. My son told me about it. He’s like, ‘Dad, you know the best team is SoccerAid’. I was like, ‘Right, let’s see it’. That’s how you know you’re getting old!”
Football-mad Hussein, like his older sister Aisha, is getting into running now, but Mo is determined not to pressure them.
“I just try to keep my kids active. Now they’re making their own choices, and I support them. The longer you let them be kids, the better. For me, running was about me finding my own two feet and actually enjoying making friends.”
